Allan McNish
BBC Radio 5 live Formula 1 analyst

"Looking up at the skies, there is a few thunder clouds lingering around the mountains."

Second free practice for the Austrian Grand Prix begins.

Nico Hulkenberg is among the first out after giving his car up in FP1.

A reminder that we have live commentary of this session via this page. Listen in using the audio tab above.

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer

We can now add Toro Rosso to the list of teams with driver-related shenanigans going on. Less than 24 hours after Carlos Sainz said he would probably not be staying at Toro Rosso in 2018, Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner has given him what amounts to a public slapdown, telling Sky: "We've exercised his option as well, so he's under contract. We have an option on him for next year and the year after, so he'll be in a Toro Rosso again next year. You have to remember that he only got an opportunity in F1 because of Red Bull investing in him in the junior years, and it's a little disingenuous to be making comments like that when a lot of investment goes into these guys to give them the opportunity.”

Horner went on to add that Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were also under contract at Red Bull, as he has been saying all season. The thing is, the other teams believe that Sainz, particularly, and also perhaps Ricciardo are gettable for 2018. It’s not quite clear why, but they do. Renault and McLaren are both known to be interested in Sainz, and Ricciardo is also said to be of interest to a number of teams. And people remember 2014 - when Horner spent all year saying Sebastian Vettel was under contract for 2015, only for him to go to Ferrari. Horner says this time it’s different. And of course he would know. But others seem less sure.

Interesting times.

Image source, Getty Images

You've just over an hour to vote on this hot topic.

The ayes have it pretty emphatically at this point.

Do I hear any more noes?

So, there was talk of storms for second practice - looks like there's potentially more in store for qualifying, too.

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer

Image source, Reuters

Here is a sentence you have not read very often in the past two and a half years - there was some good news at McLaren in first practice on Friday. Both cars were cars were fitted with the latest “Phase Three” Honda engine. This is reputed to be about 20kw - or 26bhp - more powerful than the Phase Two engine, which McLaren engineers believe was about 70kw - or 93bhp - down on a customer Mercedes. And both McLaren drivers were in the top 10 in first practice. Whether that remains the case is another matter, of course.

The other bit of good news concerned Stoffel Vandoorne. He entered F1 with a very strong reputation, but has been lagging well behind team-mate Fernando Alonso so far. In P1, though, he was consistently quicker, and ended up 0.2secs faster. Whether that remains the case is another matter, of course. But it’s finally a bit of encouragement after a lot of work behind the scenes with the Belgian on helping him adapt his style to F1.

Thirty minutes til FP2 begins.

Places everyone.

Right, while the teams explain to their drivers what the brake pedal does, we here at BBC Towers will park this page for a little while and go practise our yodeling.

Andrew Benson's FP1 report will provide succour in our absence and can be found here.

We'll be back here at 12:30 BST for FP2. Bye til then.

Yellow flagpublished at 10:30 British Summer Time 7 July 2017

10:30 BST 7 July 2017

Max Verstappen spins at Turn Three having just set the fastest first sector of anyone.

Allan McNish in the 5 live commentary box sagely observes that the reason Verstappen set the first the quickest time in the first sector - which ends just before Turn Three - is probably because he didn't bother braking as he entered the corner!